romance, mystery and everything in between

Menu

Happy New Year, everyone! In 2016, I read a total of 65 books, which is about 59 less than I read in 2015. Out of those books, the majority of them were paranormal romance and about 34 were published in 2016 (that’s more than the 22 new releases I read in 2015).

Movie:Treat – The movie is so different from the book that if you named it something else, you’d never really guess there was a connection between the two. This is a fun flick about two witches who kill a dude and try to cover it up. It’s lighthearted… I promise.

Book: Treat – I absolutely loved this book as a kid. One of my goals is to eventually go back and read the entire series, since I’ve only read this one.

Movie:Trick – Here’s an unpopular opinion, I don’t like the movie “Wizard of Oz”. While I appreciate it as a pivotal piece of film history, I cringe at the thought of having to watch it. Might be because I was forced to see it so many times as a kid. Continue reading →

If you’ve ever been to a blogging workshop, I’m sure you’ve inevitably heard someone in the crowd ask, “What social media sites should I use?”. The answer seems to always be, “Whichever ones you enjoy using.” If you’re like me, that pretty much means none of them. So, what do you do?

The obvious answer is to ignore the ones you don’t like. However, there seems to be this impression that in order to be a successful blogger you need to be a power user on every popular social media platform. I don’t believe this is true. In fact, I would argue that attempting to be on every platform is stretching yourself too thin. It makes blogging exhausting when you feel the need to maintain active accounts for your blog on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat, Google+, GoodReads, Pinterest, etc. and you increase your risk of burning out. Continue reading →

In the mood for something trippy? Then “The Hike” is for you. Ben is on a work trip when he decides to take a short hike while waiting for a meeting. When he sees two men wearing the skinned-off faces of Rottweilers dragging a dead body in the woods, he makes a run for it. Pursued by the killers, Ben quickly finds himself stumbling down an unfamiliar path where things like talking crabs, cannibalistic giants and a humongous cricket wait for him.

The best way to describe “The Hike” is as a series of crazy nonsensical events. While the constant barrage of weirdness coming at Ben was exactly what I had been looking for, it stopped working for me around the mid-point. Mostly because “The Hike” seems to be trying to make a point about anger or depression through an “Alice in Wonderland” style story, which doesn’t come across very well. Continue reading →

I wasn’t really feeling this week’s Top 10 Tuesday topic, which is literary characters you’d name a pet after. So, I’m going rogue this week. Since we’re getting closer to Halloween, I’m doing my top 10 favorite creature features. As I’m sure you’ll notice from the movies listed below, I have a thing for campy horror.

From IMDb: After a space merchant vessel perceives an unknown transmission as distress call, their landing on the source moon finds one of the crew attacked by a mysterious lifeform. Continuing their journey back to Earth with the attacked crew having recovered and the critter deceased, they soon realize that its life cycle has merely begun.

“Read it or Ditch it” is a new weekly feature I’ll be doing each Monday on the blog. The goal is to force myself into making a decision regarding some titles on my TBR pile. Each week I’ll select a book that has sat unread on my shelves for longer than a year and ask the question “Read it or Ditch it?”. If I still want to read it, then by posting it here I’m claiming that I’ll read it by the end of the year. If I’m no longer interested in the book, then this is a send off to the title since I’ll either be donating or selling it.

At the end of the year, I’ll do a round-up post to see how I did. If there are any titles that I said I’d read, but still didn’t, then I’ll either donate or sell those. Hopefully, doing this will help me reach my goal of only 100 books sitting unread on my TBR pile by the end of 2016.

WatchmenAuthor: Alan MoorePublished: 1987Genre: Graphic NovelLength of Time on TBR Pile: About 11 yearsRead it or Ditch it?: Ditch it Continue reading →

Elena and Raphael are back again as the focus of another Guild Hunter book. This time the pair is called away from New York for a meeting with the Cadre. When they arrive, Elena is shocked to hear that she resembles someone who used to live in the area. Thinking there may be a connection to her mother’s past laying in the city, Elena investigates with the help of fellow angel Aodhan.

I mentioned in my review of “Archangel’s Legion” that Raphael and Elena’s books are usually game changers in the Guild Hunter series. Well… I was wrong. “Archangel’s Heart” was a filler book. We do have some fairly big revelations about Elena’s family, but I wasn’t on board with the direction of that storyline. Continue reading →